It’s New Year’s Day at 9am. The sky is overcast. The air is a crisp 42 degrees. We’re standing at the end of a dock on Lake Washington. We strip down to our swimsuits and jump in. Splash! The water is bitingly cold, almost painful. We stay in as long as we can – which isn’t very long – and dry ourselves off on the dock. It takes a long… Read More »Discomfort is Inevitable
“The pain that’s created by avoiding hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself.” –Russel Simmons1 Procrastinating comes with many costs. One is “the thinking cost” – the taxing mental exercise of thinking about whatever you’re not doing, coming up with excuses to not do it, and then feeling guilty about procrastinating as you choose a more pleasant task. The longer you put… Read More »The Pain of Procrastination
What are feelings? What is pain, pleasure, hot, cold, an itch, or a tickle? On a purely physical level, feelings are just nerve signals – neurons firing in your body to communicate with your brain. What about feelings within your brain? Fear, confidence, sadness, happiness, and the like? These are just nerve signals too – patterns of neurons firing in your brain. Nerve signals are neutral. There is nothing inherently… Read More »They’re Just Nerve Signals
We say things like this to ourselves: “It doesn’t count as a workout unless I do 45 minutes.” “It doesn’t count as reading unless I finish a chapter.” “It doesn’t count as meditating unless I do 20 minutes.” “It doesn’t count as writing unless I finish a blog post.” But when we say these things to ourselves, we’re usually justifying not taking action. We’re giving a reason to do nothing… Read More »This Mindset Helps You Show Up Consistently